Early this summer, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign for president learned that the men’s magazine GQ was working on a story the campaign was sure to hate: an account of infighting in Hillaryland.

So Clinton’s aides pulled a page from the book of Hollywood publicists and offered GQ a stark choice: Kill the piece, or lose access to planned celebrity coverboy Bill Clinton.

Not that I think her supporters will care one way or another about this kind of hardball. She’s successfully figured out a Democratic version of Bush’s “skip (or de-legitimize) the middleman” approach to messaging; the Clinton base trusts the MSM about as much as Freepers do — all she needs now is her own network (maybe Rupert will provide it, too). And Clinton campaign is the only one getting away such tactics because it’s the only one that can.